The Writings of MD Nalapat

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Sunday, 4 February 2018

A former UPA minister is trying, secretly, to engineer a meltdown in stock market prices by 1 October this year.

A prominent
politician, who was a minister during the Manmohan Singh government, is
behind a move by as much as 31 brokerages and international and
domestic financial agencies to secretly engineer a meltdown in stock
market prices such that market indices lose around half their 2 February
level by 1 October 2018. They are working in tandem with a few
officials in key ministries, who have lately renewed or expanded their
contact with the politician in question in the expectation that he will
return to a top position in a future government, should the BJP go the
A.B. Vajpayee way next year and fail to get re-elected. The politician’s
business associates in India and abroad are hopeful that he may even
get “the highest job”, according to a senior official tracking the
activities of the former minister. A colleague estimated that “at least
Rs 39,000 crore was made by the minister while in office just through
stock market manipulations”. An officer dealing in the financial sector
explained that the minister would use the information and clout of a
particular ministry to move share markets in the direction most
profitable to him and those friends and family who joined with him in
such speculation. “If the Finance as well as the Commerce & Industry
Ministries worked in tandem, and if they had a high-level confidential
source in RBI as well, they could make policy announcements (or hints)
that would immediately push up or down prices of certain stocks”, an
official explained, adding that this was precisely what was done during
the minister’s long tenure in office.

If coordinated moves were designed so as
to drive prices artificially up by making retail investors flock to
certain stocks, the minister would subsequently influence government
agencies through trusted officials to purchase stock and “make huge buys
at elevated levels”, a senior official explained. These would “mostly
be the shares purchased earlier (at much lower prices) by the minister
and his cabal (of friends and family), by using foreign institutional
investors and devices such as Participatory Notes, so that they cannot
be identified”. The officials said that it would be “child’s play” to
check the share purchase docket of agencies such as LIC or other
state-controlled financial giants to determine which shares were bought
during 2004-2014 at prices that soon afterwards crashed. He went on to
say that this was surprisingly not attempted by the present government.
He added that “the (former) minister has seen to it that the officials
who connived with him have almost all been given important
responsibilities even to this day, hence their loyalty to the man”. In
other instances, leaks made through business newspapers and television
channels were carefully designed so as to depress prices of select
shares, and once prices fell significantly, the minister and his cabal
(including associates in trusted brokerage firms and stock exchanges)
would buy such shares through the anonymous FII route. Once the shares
were bought, “fresh announcements in the form of rollback of earlier
statements, or positive hints about policy towards the sector in
question would be given. This would send up prices of target companies,
at which time the shares bought at low prices would be sold.” The
sources said that “by this fail safe system, the minister and his
cronies and kin made enormous sums of money working entirely through the
banking system”, a part of which was later brought back into the
country through FIIs, and some cash through hawala routes. “Certain
brokers, many of whom operate from Rajasthan and Punjab, are close to
the (former) minister. They are neck-deep in hawala transactions, and
are the channels that are being used to bring cash back into the
country”, a senior official claimed. “These brokers need to be
investigated seriously for their hawala links, but so far even SEBI has
done precious little against them”, an official said, adding that he was
hopeful that this may change in view of the fact that “some outstanding
police officials have recently been given responsibility for
investigating hawala channels”.

Amazingly, the former minister is
claiming credit for both the negative opening of the Singapore stock
exchange on 2 February, as well as the unusual warning by Fitch rating
agency that higher welfare spending in the budget just announced would
impact India’s upgrade. Fitch’s comment was unexpected and the former
minister has claimed to his associates that his “friends” in New York,
London, Singapore and Dubai will ensure that Moody’s, Standard &
Poor’s, as well as Goldman Sachs will soon issue similar warnings on
India. The “October Meltdown” cabal expects these coming negative
international comments by the very agencies that the Narendra Modi
government is showcasing as his boosters, to spook financial markets.

In the weeks before the Union Budget was
presented, reports appeared about likely measures, including a tax on
long-term capital gains. In the past in many cases, were a report about a
proposed budgetary measure to get revealed in the media, that step
would have been cancelled, but in the case of the 2018-19 Union Budget,
the government has gone ahead with the announcement of a tax on
long-term capital gains despite media reports forecasting exactly such a
move. “The cabal was confident that the measure would be introduced
despite the media reports. They however advised unsuspecting clients to
buy stocks.” The stocks bought during the pre-budget period by retail
investors were in large part those being offloaded at the same time by
the 31 brokers and other financial players behind the “October Meltdown”
cabal led by the former UPA-era minister, who interestingly was the
same individual who got planted the fake news report about a “coup
attempt” by the then Chief of the Army Staff, General V.K. Singh. “The
very brokers who advised unwary clients to buy were themselves at the
same time short-selling their own stock through proprietary and offshore
accounts, including those controlled by the former minister and his
kin.” As all such transactions are taking place through the FII route
and anyway official agencies seem to be looking the other way, officials
say that the “October Meltdown” cabal is confident that they will
escape any consequences for the actions they are taking to ensure that
retail investors suffer immense financial losses as a consequence of the
manipulations indulged in by the gang. “The only problem facing the
cabal is that it will cost about Rs 3000 crore to engineer a crash of
sufficient proportions.” Those aware of the operation claim that the
UPA-era minister is presently willing to spend only Rs 500 crore of his
own stash in the operation, but that he has raised another Rs 650 crore
from others. An official forecast that the former minister will pony up
“as much as Rs 2,000 crore, but only if he is confident that he will get
the same rank in a post-poll government as he enjoyed during the UPA
period”. A colleague of the official added that the ambitious and
brilliant politician from a large state “does not want to be the
Subramanian Swamy of the new government, who does the heavy lifting
bringing down the image of the rival party and then gets peanuts as
reward, the more so as the moves made by him would be carried out in
secret, unlike Swamy’s, which were all in the open”.

Many of the senior members of the cabal,
including brokerage firms close to the former minister, retain close
contact with senior officials and politicians in the present government,
several of whom the former minister had assisted while he was in
office. Many of the officials who worked closely with the former
minister in facilitating his moneymaking operations retain positions of
high responsibility in the present government. Once he took charge as
Prime Minister, Narendra Modi decided in a statesmanlike gesture to
avoid a housecleaning of the bureaucracy by removing those linked to the
previous regime. Instead, many such officials have been given honour
and respect by the new government, as well as multiple promotions.
Unfortunately for Modi, some of these officials have continued their
confidential contacts with their previous patrons, and are favourably
inclined towards a change in government. The UTI scam that cost millions
of small investors their savings played a key role in ensuring the
defeat of the BJP in towns and cities across India in 2004. Should there
be a stock market crash on the scale planned by the “October Meltdown”
cabal headed by the former minister, once again towns and cities across
India are likely to vote against the BJP. It may be remembered that in
the Gujarat Assembly polls, only a strong showing in urban areas ensured
the return to power of the BJP, and this in Modi’s own state. A stock
market crash would be sufficient to persuade even Gujarat voters to look
elsewhere the next time around.

The officials concerned gave examples of
the manipulations of the former minister, including in the sale of a
mining entity in Goa, whose share price was temporarily lowered (during
negotiations for outright sale) as a consequence of a budget
announcement made by the finance ministry during the UPA regime. Once
the transfer of the company took place to friendly hands (at a low
price), the final budget proposals withdrew the very budget announcement
that had temporarily depressed the mining company’s stock so as to
enable its purchase at a low price. “There are dozens of such examples
of manipulation of share prices, but no one seems to be interested in
looking into them”, an official said, adding that SEBI has been “worse
than useless” in checking much of the misuse of stock exchanges for
enrichment through price manipulation and insider trading.

Should the former minister be given an
assurance by his party that he will be pitchforked into high office
after the polls, the BJP may be in for an electoral ride made impossibly
rough by the newly formed “October Meltdown” cabal using its deep
pockets to engineer a steep and steady fall in share prices during the
period preceding the Lok Sabha elections.

Amma lived her life in the way celebrated in Frank Sinatra’s song, ‘I did it my way’.

On
1 February, Google featured the mother of this columnist, Kamala Das
(later named Suraiya), in its search website, commemorating the day when
her book My Story had
been released. My mother—Amma—wrote about relationships that she had
had, being among the very few women to do so at that time. Her premise
was that the body of a woman belonged only to herself, and hence she
alone had the right to decide on relationships, no matter what her
marital or maternal status. My Story was not the only controversial book penned by a member of the family. Years earlier, the Nehru government had banned Rama Retold,
a satirical novel written by Aubrey Menen, the uncle of this columnist.
Although there were of course writers and editors within the clan who
ruffled no feathers, such as his paternal grandfather C.V. Subrananya
Iyer, who was the Founder-Editor of the first English-language journal
published in the Malabar district of British-held India, the Malabar Quarterly Review.
Or great-uncle Narayana Menon and grandmother Balamani Amma, the former
launching the rationalist movement in Kerala through his writings. From
the start, Amma must have been a handful to bring up, as the only mind
she felt compelled to obey was her own. At a very young age she decided
to marry my father, who cherished her to the close of his life in 1992,
and who stood by her no matter how many the controversies her writings
and on occasion her lifestyle created. Father had begun to love my
mother about a year before they married, and this flame never faltered
in him, nor the reciprocal feelings in her. They quarrelled with each
other, each sometimes exasperated the other, but the shock absorber
preventing serious damage to their 43-year relationship was their
devotion to each other, a feeling that weathered all storms.

Kamala—Amma—was her own college and
university, reading shelves of books every month and demonstrating a
huge curiosity about life. For years after she began writing, in both
Malayalam as well as English, few editors saw her as a good investment
in their use of newsprint. One day, when this columnist returned home
from school with awful grades, Amma showed him dozens of rejection slips
from editors, each safely stowed away. She showed the lot and smiled,
for by then Kamala Das was already among the more famous of poets in
English and novelists in Malayalam. Her silent lesson was that however
terrible today was, there would be a tomorrow which could well be
better, much better. Years earlier, his mother had saved this
columnist’s life, sitting without rest and sleep beside his bedside for
the weeks that pleurisy threatened to take his life away, leaping for
the oxygen supply whenever breathing was becoming too difficult to bear.
Amma’s bedside vigil continued day upon day, night after night, until
providence decided that enough was enough, it was time for better health
to arrive. It was probably from that time that this columnist realised
that women were in reality the stronger sex, and that the world would be
much better were they not so often shackled by patriarchal mores. This,
of course, was hardly a problem in Amma’s family, which for generations
had been a matriarchy. Would Amma have had the confidence to begin a
writing career with so limited a base in formal education if she had not
been confident since the beginning of her life that women were special,
and that it was therefore natural that they do special things? Would
Kamala Das have had the courage to ignore or deflect the verbal and
written darts thrown at her by those angered by her refusal to shrink
herself into a stereotypical mould, if she had not been nurtured within a
matriarchal culture? Perhaps she would, for there are several women
from precisely such an environment that have surprised traditionalists
by moving away from conventionality. Oddly for those at home in
societies where only sons matter, my mother could not forgive her three
children for all being male, as too were two Muslim boys with
differential sight that she and my father brought into our home. Living
together as a family, it was soon obvious that religious differences
were superficial. It was perhaps from Irshad and Imtiaz that by the
close of the 1970s Amma grew interested in Islam, a religion that she
acknowledged publicly as hers only in 1999.

Much has been said about this conversion,
and some unflattering theories have been aired about the reasons, with
some even claiming that she would have reconverted but for “pressure”
from this columnist. It is amusing to hear that there are those who
claim to believe that a woman as secure as Kamala Das would have
listened to anyone’s orders, much less a son who with pride accepted her
as the Matriarch. Such talk took wing after Amma died in 2009 and was
buried in the Palayam mosque rather than cremated. Two days before she
passed on, Amma had told her daughters-in-law “not to burn” her, a
command that was relayed to this columnist. She was therefore buried as
she had wished, but from then onwards, trolls have feasted on this
columnist for not cremating her. The traducers are still active, and the
latest bout of abuse has been in the form of an application to the
Kerala High Court to ban a forthcoming movie on Kamala Das (Suraiya),
because the script apparently did not incorporate the defamatory
falsehoods peddled about her by individuals who were unhappy with the
poetess embracing a faith they privately saw as retrogressive. The
individual who filed the case portrays Amma as a weak woman bullied by
others into doing what she did not want to do, and also not doing what
she wanted. This is not so much an insult as it is a joke. Kamala
(Suraiya) lived her life in the way celebrated in Frank Sinatra’s song,
“I did it my way”. She lived her entire life her way, and those who
loved her (including her husband and her sons) would not have had it
otherwise.

Friday, 2 February 2018

THOSE who appreciate a good thriller will find Michael Wolff’s “Fire
and Fury” an excellent read, not as history but as fiction. Although the
initial reaction to his 321 page book on the Trump White House showed
an absence of scepticism about the veracity of the many assertions he
has made about what went on in the inner councils of the 45th President
of the US, over the weeks, inconsistencies in the narrative are becoming
clearer. Among the items hinted by Wolff (and later elaborated in an
MSNBC interview) was that Trump was romantically involved with Nikki
Haley, the personable US Ambassador to UN, and that both had travelled
together several times on Air Force One, sometimes for long
transcontinental flights.
This story was shown to be false once it came out that the only time
Haley and Trump travelled together on the Chief Executive’s aircraft was
on a flight from New York to Washington, a trip that would have been
covered in less than an hour. Women have for long undergone the pain of
being accused of using their charms to get promotions, and the Wolff
titbit was presumably planted by someone in the Trump team who was
unhappy at news reports suggesting that Nikki Haley may soon replace Rex
Tillerson as Secretary of State. Wolff has shown himself to be an easy
mark for those wishing to load him with false information in the
certainly that he would write as though the falsehoods told to him were
true. That the book is a work of fiction becomes clear from the first
few pages, where the author goes to considerable lengths to convince the
reader that Donald Trump not only did not believe he would defeat
Hillary Clinton, but that he actually did not want to be President of
the US.
Interestingly, channels such as CNN were discussing the sort of news
channel Trump would start, certain as they were that he would lose to
their favourite, Hillary. As for Kellyanne Conway, Reince Priebus and
Steve Bannon, would they have exchanged jobs in the innermost circle of
power within the world’s most powerful country for an extra dash of
celebrity? The first chapter of the book itself makes clear to those not
blinded in their reasoning by hatred of Trump that Wolff was penning a
work of fiction. Any individual with even a smidgen of insight into the
personality of Donald Trump knew that the man hated to lose, and
abhorred being second best. He played to win, and played only to win.
But not if you believe the anonymous sources quoted by Michael Wolff,
which were probably White House and other US Govt staff that had fancy
titles but little responsibility, and who were inventing stories to
convince Wolff that they were more important than they actually were. It
must be assumed that Wolff is a journalist of integrity.
However, every scribe is only as good as her or his sources, and it
would appear that his anonymous sources were pushing the Washington
Beltway narrative of a US President who was out of his depth and even
out of control while holding the most consequential job in the world.
Someday the book will be made into a movie despite its erroneous
statements, for the reason that Trump’s brand of politics creates foes
who will believe the worst about him no matter how improbable such
reports may be. Interestingly, around the same time as the book, a film
has been released about the Pentagon Papers dealing with the Vietnam
war, and the role of the Washington Post and the New York Times in
publishing this trove of secret documents to fury from the Nixon White
House.
The Watergate-era US President is shown as a petty individual who barred
reporters from the Washington Post from coming to the White House after
the newspaper disobeyed requests by government agencies to desist from
releasing information that had been marked secret. The owner of the
Washington Post is shown to be a courageous and idealistic publisher,
who gave the “go ahead” to Editor Benjamin C Bradlee despite the risk
that publication may lead to the closure of the newspaper as a
consequence of hostile actions instigated by President Nixon and his
combative team of Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Kissinger. The US Supreme
Court made history (and in the correct way) by decreeing that newspapers
“serve the governed and not the governors”, and hence that the Post and
the Times could publish the secret history of the Vietnam war. Since
then, the US has been through several leaks of sensitive records, such
as by the Wikileaks expose of US diplomatic files (in which this
columnist also figures) and the Titanic-size revelation of secrets of
the National Security Agency (NSA) by Edward Snowden.
None of this has adversely affected the interests of the US, thereby
proving that secrecy in the name of security is a fetish of governments
related to their own desire not to allow errors to come to public
attention. It may be recalled that even the “liberal” President Obama
went ballistic at both Julian Assange of Wikileaks and Edward Snowden.
For years Assange has had to imprison himself in the Colombian embassy
in London, while Snowden is in Moscow and faces a long jail term should
he ever return to the US. It is clear that all those who reach the top
of government undergo a mental transformation in which they believe
themselves to represent the nation, so that anybody not obeying them
becomes condemned as “anti-national”. That the US is still a free
society is why Michael Wolff can not only write a salacious and
mendacious book about the President of his country, but thrive in the
proceeds and publicity of his effort. In few other countries would he
have such a luxury.

Monday, 29 January 2018

Security has been tightened in several Indian states
after protests against a Bollywood film turned violent. Demonstrators
said the movie shows a romance between a legendary Hindu queen and a
Muslim invader.

Schools in one New Delhi suburb were
closed after a school bus was attacked. CGTN’s Shweta Bajaj reports that
the unrest comes as the country is marking an important national
holiday.

Tight security is normal in India ahead of Republic Day,
but this year, there’s an extra reason to be on alert. Security has
been tightened after radical Hindu groups began protesting a Bollywood
Film called "Padmawat".

They said the film is
disrespectful to their culture by showing a Hindu queen romancing a
Muslim king. People who have watched the film dispute that claim, but
that hasn’t stopped the protests.

Protesters even attacked a school bus on Wednesday, prompting officials to close many schools in the area.

The
demonstrations have already delayed the film's premiere by two months.
One newspaper editor worries about the effect of censorship on India’s
society.

“We need a culture of openness, of
intellectual freedom, of social freedom,” said Madhav Nalapat, editorial
director of The Sunday Guardian. “We have all these debates going on
about what kind of food to eat, what kind of clothes to wear. Every day
there’s a flurry of false reports, and films are being banned, books are
being attacked. This is not a culture in which a service economy can
grow. It’s not a culture in which a knowledge economy can grow.”

Many
cinemas have decided not to screen the film even though India’s highest
court has rejected a request to ban the film. The courts instead
directed individual states to maintain law and order.

Some
religious groups have accused the director of the film of distorting
history. The filmmaker denies the allegations, but the debate continues.

Sunday, 28 January 2018

BJP MP Varun Gandhi has asked Lok Sabha Speaker, Sumitra Mahajan, to
start a 'movement' to encourage rich MPs to give up their salaries for
the rest of the term of the lower house. He says this will reinforce
people's faith in their representatives.

Saturday, 27 January 2018

Boundary into overreach may have been crossed, not by BJP, but by ECI.

Politics
in India is a saga of unintended consequences, and so it may turn out
to be for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). In 2014, its supremo Arvind
Kejriwal seems to have been given more than the normal dose of flattery
by his followers, as he believed that he could emerge as the national
alternative to Narendra Modi during the year’s Lok Sabha polls. Hence,
his high-decibel verbal assaults on Modi, together with the electoral
challenge posed to the next Prime Minister in Varanasi. Given the
nonexistent possibility of a repeat of its earlier successes in Assembly
polls, it was wise of the Congress Party to silently withdraw from the
2015 Delhi Assembly contest, thereby enabling the AAP to demolish the
BJP just months after the latter party had swept the Lok Sabha polls in
the national capital. The victory should have served as the signal for
Kejriwal to focus on Delhi and showcase to the nation his administrative
skills. Instead, he continued an obsessive negative focus on (now)
Prime Minister Modi, behaving more as the (by then non-existent) Leader
of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha than as the Chief Minister of the
National Capital Territory of Delhi. Even more incongruously, Kejriwal,
in full view of television cameras, would switch from Chief Minister to
Chief Agitator at ten minutes’ notice, in the process converting an
attempt at pathos into farce. Kejriwal’s neglect of urban India’s
mindset through a focus on rural problems was another error. The AAP
seemed to regard themselves as a 21st century version of Charu
Mazumdar’s change agents in Naxalbari, rather than as the city-centric
force they are best equipped to be.

The Jan Sangh began and thrived as an
urban party, and to this day, the BJP relies on a Lok Sabha sweep of the
cities to ensure power. Potentially, it is the AAP that can offer the
stiffest challenge to the BJP in the cities and towns of India, a factor
that has presumably motivated the high-voltage counterattack on AAP and
its leaders by the BJP. If we look at FIRs filed against political
leaders, it is almost as though there is only the AAP, so prolific has
been the filing of cases against its functionaries. Given the electoral
math, Kejriwal’s party is far more a long-term threat to the BJP than it
is to any other party.

The problem with going after an opponent
is that you may be too successful for the good of your cause, and this
is what seems to be taking place vis-à-vis Kejriwal and the BJP. The
boundary into overreach may have been crossed, not by the BJP but the
Election Commission of India (ECI), which has disqualified 20 AAP MLAs
for “holding an office of profit”. Legislators are elected by the
people, and a wholly unelected body such as the ECI ought to think
multiple times before reducing the choice of the voters to a nullity
before their term is over. Indeed, a case exists for holding elections
to the ECI, so that the commissioners are chosen directly by the people,
rather than by the government of the day. Such a system would also
ensure that India’s Election Commissioners have more familiarity with
the practical mechanics of the electoral system than is indicated by
some of their decisions.

To those such as this columnist who are
not intelligent enough to understand the nuances of the “office of
profit” controversy, it seems a tad unfair to disqualify elected
legislators simply because they have been given an office. Legislators
countrywide are provided accommodation, and this obviously costs money.
So is such housing also to be regarded as “profit”? As for office staff,
every legislator (and MP) should be given office space as well as staff
so as to look after constituents, the way the US does. Also, previous
governments, including in Delhi, appear to have appointed Parliamentary
Secretaries. Why is it that the ECI had not questioned these? Is it the
contention of the present commissioners that their predecessors were
remiss in their duties? There are Parliamentary Secretaries in other
states in India. Whatever the limits placed on the functioning of its
elected executive, Delhi was made a National Capital Territory. Is the
ECI gaze confined only to the city in which commissioners have their
office and residences? India has an asylum full of laws, and if
technicalities get used to disqualify the elected, it would be possible
for zealous individuals in authority to zero in on some technicality or
the other to ensure that legislatures (and Parliament) get drained of
much of its members otherwise than through elections. Of course,
although the AAP is blaming the Narendra Modi government for the action
of the ECI, the reality is that each of the commissioners is above the
age of consent, and hence they have to be regarded as fully responsible
for their own actions.

Anna Hazare became a national hero in
2011 courtesy arrest by Home Minister P. Chidambaram. Despite its public
stance at the time, the BJP was obviously delighted with the
development, as it has given the Home Ministry official, through whom
the arrest was made, an MP and now a Minister of State. The BJP
leadership was clearly aware that the arrest of the venerable Hazare
would further damage Congress prospects, which perhaps explains its
reward for the then Union Home Secretary. Should the Congress Party
return to power in 2019 courtesy the errors of the BJP, hopefully it
will similarly remember the service done to it by Chief Election
Commissioner A.K. Joti, the man responsible for the AAP legislators’
disqualification, and make him an MP and an MoS (Independent Charge).
Joti’s move has created an aura of vindictiveness around the BJP that is
undeserved because it is wholly the ECI and not at all the Modi
government that is responsible. This blow could give the AAP several
more votes in each of the 28 Bangalore Assembly segments of the
Karnataka electoral map where it will set up a candidate. The temporary
loss of 20 MLAs pales before the gain in goodwill that AAP has got
across India as a consequence of CEC Joti regarding an office as
“profit”.

Friday, 26 January 2018

THERE are numerous occasions on which the well-paid albeit under
worked (in terms of productive effort) bureaucrats in the European Union
Secretariat lecture other countries about the need to respect the
popular will. However, when it comes to their own members, the EU gives
them a free pass, no matter how egregious the human rights
transgression. The Romany are as a community treated very shabbily in
much of Europe, denied the privileges and access of most other citizens,
barring migrants from those regions which have been the target of
“human rights wars” waged by EU member states together with the US. No
serious effort has been made to spend the relatively small sums required
to bring the underprivileged and historically persecuted Romany
populations of Europe to the same educational level as other members of
the community.
To practise what’s preached seems a difficult task for the Brussels
bureaucracy including in the matter of going by the expressed will of
the population. Catalonia and its people have been witnessing this
double standard during the past months, with the EU backing Madrid in
its smothering of the right of the Catalan people to have the political
construct of their choice, in line with what the EU claims are its
foundational values. The King of Spain has encouraged his Ministers in
the Central Government in their undemocratic refusal to permit Barcelona
to have a government of its choice, led by Carles Puidgemont, the
individual who represents the desire for autonomy of the Catalan
population. Indeed, Puidgemont will most likely get arrested were he to
return from Belgium, where he fled under threat of incarceration were he
to remain in Spain. Despite the clear preference for freedom of a
majority of voters in Catalonia (which included around a third of
non-Catalans, almost all of whom would have voted against independence),
the EU has refused to chastise the Madrid government for tactics
reminiscent of General Francisco Franco and his suppression of the
anti-Nazi Spanish Republic.
Not surprisingly, Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering sent over aircraft
and troops to kill those Spaniards who were opposing the Franco
dictatorship which continued for decades and ended only with his death
of old age. Catalonia is seething with discontent, eager to be freed of
the high cost in both money as well as liberty of being ruled from
Madrid rather than from Barcelona. The EU is an institution on life
support after the British people voted to break away from the Union last
year. Only two countries, the UK and Germany, bear the financial burden
of the EU, with the others being passengers so far as payments into the
grouping are concerned. Once the UK breaks away, only Germany will be
left, and the financial burden on Berlin will be so substantial that
voters in that country will follow their British counterparts in seeking
to break away from Brussels and its expanding bureaucracy.
In Italy, the northern region is restless at the way in which it is
being made to subsidize the poorer south, and increasingly there are
voices calling for a “Catalan solution” to the problem. Even in France,
certain regions regard themselves as meriting more autonomy than the
centralised French system of governance gives them. It is in fear of
such a boost to fissiparous impulses that the EU as a grouping has stood
by Madrid while it uses police methods to deny the Catalan people the
freedom they desire from the coils of Spain. Such a stance is an error,
for the most important advantage of the EU construct is the fact that it
has made national boundaries largely irrelevant. Even if Catalonia were
to secede from Spain, were both in the EU, the people of either country
would be able to travel and settle down in the other. Apart from the
fact that less of Catalonia’s taxes would be going for the upkeep of
facilities and personnel in what would be left of Spain, there would be
almost no difference on the ground even after the Catalan region got its
independence.
The same situation would apply to any other region within the EU that
broke away from the country in which it is now a part. Indeed, given
such a situation, it is an example of the perversity and absence of
rationality in multiple bureaucratic decisions that Brussels is warning
Barcelona that any new Catalan state may not get admitted into the EU.
In fact, EU rules should be amended such that a breakaway part of an
existing member state would automatically become part of the EU. This
would cushion the blow to the remaining part of the vivisected state,
and reduce very significantly the impact of any such move towards
freedom. Indeed, this would emerge as a key advantage of the European
Union, that it would permit the full play of regional sentiments even
should they cross the line of sovereignty and towards independence.
Smaller states could be governed better and have central governments
that are closer to the people.
The massive “tent” that is the EU would be able to accommodate any
splinter state that gets formed as a consequence of popular impulses.
Rather than turn away the Catalans or seek to join with Madrid in
choking the momentum of their drive towards independence, the European
Union leadership should embrace new states that are formed out of its
present member states. Within the EU, such pluralism can flourish, which
indeed will give the EU an advantage that it otherwise did not have.
Even in the case of the UK, should Scotland secede, London may find that
EU membership is preferable to opting out, but only in that situation.
The EU is a perfect construct for ensuring the painless break-up of a
member state into separate entities. In this respect, Europe has an
advantage that most other regions with secessionist impulses lack.

Wednesday, 24 January 2018

One of the most awaited speeches at the World
Economic Forum in Davos was that of Narendra Modi, who is the first
Indian prime minister to attend the high-profile forum in more than two
decades.

The timing is highly important: India is
looking for investment as its economy has been struggling for the last
six months. The country needs high growth to employ its population of
1.3 billion.

Modi's speech pitched India as a hotbed for opportunities.

"I
invite you all to come to India if you want wellness with wealth,
wholeness with health and peace with prosperity. You will always be
welcomed in India wholeheartedly," he said.

Back in
India, the economy is slowing down and job growth is sluggish. Modi’s
"Make in India" plan has not taken off yet, but he is looking for ways
to fulfill the needs of the country's population.

Indian economists say bureaucracy still remains a major hurdle and the government led by Modi hasn't done enough.

"Unfortunately
till now we still have high taxes. We still have high regulations and
we have too much of the government. The fact is that Prime Minister Modi
wants minimum government, but so far the minimum government has not
taken place," economic analyst Madhav Nalapat told CGTN.

Modi
has repeatedly promised an easier business environment for other
countries to set up enterprises in India. In Davos, he repeated the same
pledge.

But on the ground, things haven’t changed.
From tax structure to labor and land reforms, too much bureaucracy has
always been India’s bane.

The complicated red tape
concerns land use, staff hiring and investment, economist Subhomoy
Bhattacharjee said, noting that India has productive resources, of which
the country is not making full use.

India's economy
is expected to reach five trillion US dollars by 2025 with an urgent
need to create jobs for its young population. Therefore, Modi’s vision
for India includes a global manufacturing hub, a dream that still needs
major structural reforms.

Time is also running out
for India. The country has a demographic potential for the next 20 to 25
years after which its population will start ageing.

For now, India’s seven-percent growth is not enough to spread its benefits to the large population.

"We
need 11-12 percent growth. We need the same kind of growth that China
had during the period of Deng Xiaoping when he systematically launched
economic reforms between 1981 and 1983. We need a double-digit rate of
growth, seven percent is not enough”, said Nalapat.

Saturday, 20 January 2018

The
Israeli PM explained why the colonial construct of ‘maximum government’
was destructive for gifted populations such as those in Israel and
India.

The
modern State of Israel was formally born some months after the Union
Jack got replaced with the Tricolour across an India that was declared
independent on 15 August 1947. Israel had to fight three major wars for
its very survival, not to mention numerous other conflicts, each of
which was intended by its foes to deal it a lethal blow. The populations
of the neighbourhood it is situated in have for long been hostile to
the very existence of the Jewish state, and have made several attempts
at sabotage, violence and terror against citizens of Israel. And in the
case of the ISI-directed 26/11 Mumbai attackers, against the Jewish
population in Mumbai. The Holtzbergs were not assassinated because of a
property dispute. Indeed, they had never before had any contact with the
men sent over from Pakistan for their execution, although it is likely
that local sympathisers of terror networks met them earlier to glean
information about them and the place they were living and working in.
The Jewish couple was killed because of the same reason that six million
of the same faith were gassed to death by Germany during 1939-45. They
were murdered just for being Jewish, and this despite their being the
most productive citizens in the European countries fortunate enough to
host them. During that period, their neighbours became their
executioners, their supposed friends metamorphosed into their abusers,
not simply verbally, but often physically as well. European civilisation
has had somewhat dramatic effects on native populations in Australia,
North America, Africa and Asia, but it was only after the extermination
camps got set up by the 1933-1945 German government that the people of
that continent experienced for themselves a level of brutality not seen
since the ravages of Timur in India, where he boasted of having
slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocents, or the conquests of
Genghis Khan across Eurasia.It was, therefore, a traumatised and numerically tiny community that
looked towards once again returning to the region where their
theological ancestors had been born millennia ago. And so in 1948, they
set up the State of Israel under David Ben Gurion. Of course, given the
history of India’s leaders being alone in their backing for the doomed
Turkish caliphate in 1919, just as they were the only country to back
the failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, it was no surprise
that India voted against the admission of Israel to the United Nations
in 1949. Full diplomatic relations between Tel Aviv and Delhi had to
await the Narasimha Rao government in 1992. After that, it was only in
mid-2017 that a Prime Minister of India visited the State of Israel.
During this time, the chemistry of the region changed, with the Saudi
Arabia-Iran rivalry superseding in regional importance the problem of
Palestine, even as the consequences of Wahhabism (including the
nurturing of ISIS) became impossible to ignore among Sunni populations.
Modi was, therefore, in a far more advantageous position to visit a
country that for decades had stood by India than any of his
predecessors.Unlike India, which remains poor because of defective policies
fashioned by a colonial bureaucracy, Israel has become an advanced
country, far richer per capita than India. It was to diplomatically hint
why this difference was so that Binyamin Netanyahu gave an inspired
address to the Raisina Dialogue. Even setting aside other pluses, the
opening speech of Prime Minister Netanyahu at the Raisina Dialogue made
his visit worthwhile. With liberal doses of irony mixed with subtle
humour, he explained why the colonial construct of “maximum government”
(naturally at the expense of the autonomy of civil society) was
destructive for gifted populations such as those in Israel and India. It
was not the initiatives of government that assured progress so much as
the freeing of individual initiative through a dismantling of the
constricting framework of regulations and laws that bureaucrats (and
their political patrons) so cherished. Israel had made such a transition
much earlier and reaped the benefits, and Netanyahu hinted that India
should follow. He highlighted the freedoms inherent in a democracy, and
by implication warned against their being snuffed out or curtailed, the
way some are seeking to do in the matter of lifestyle, diet and even
movie habits.However, it must be admitted that Netanyahu oversees the Palestinian
territories in a way that leaves very little room for individual
freedom. This columnist has long held that Israel should take for itself
what territory it considers necessary for its own safety and salience,
but leave the Palestinians free to run their own lives in the remainder
of the West Bank and Gaza, of course as a demilitarised state where
there would be only the police and not an army or air force. What of
course needs to be avoided is the creation in that region of another
Pakistan, an army with a state, that views its reason for existence as
the downfall of its neighbour. A civilian (and for a while
internationally monitored) airport and port should be built within the
Palestinian territories that remain after an Israeli withdrawal. The
Palestinian people are as capable of innovation as Israelis in Israel
and Indians outside India have shown themselves to be, and even a
territorially diminished but fully autonomous State of Palestine could
soon become a regional economic powerhouse, especially if investment
flows in from its Arab neighbours and from countries such as India.
Hopefully, during his forthcoming trip to the Palestinian territories,
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will announce a gift of such essentials as
the setting up of a university and a hospital complex within the West
Bank.Prime Minister Modi has frequently shown great courage in moving
ahead on policy paths that his predecessors feared to tread. Should he
fulfil his 2014 pledge of “minimum government” through eliminating the
red tape that is drowning the economy in red ink, that would be his most
significant achievement.

Friday, 19 January 2018

IN the battle against IS (Daesh), two armed groups have been the most
effective. The most deadly is the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (
IRGC), which has eliminated the terrorists from much of Syria, despite
themselves being in the crosshairs of two influential countries and a
major bloc, the US, Israel and the GCC. But for the IRGC, assisted by
precision bombing by Russian military aircraft, long before now IS would
have occupied Damascus, the way they were intending to. The only
location where they still have presence near Syrian capital is Idlib,
which has for the past four years been a protectorate of US. Indeed, IS
found refuge in several locations where militia supplied by US and its
allies have held ground, and it is from these locations that they expect
to regroup after losing Raqqa, the way the Taliban regrouped in parts
of Afghanistan during 2006-2009 after having been defeated in
conventional battle by US-assisted Northern Alliance.
However, in places controlled by the IRGC and its allies, there is no
space for this extremist group, barring isolated acts of terror designed
to kill as many civilians as possible. After the IRGC, the most
effective force against Abubakr al Baghdadi’s men has been the Kurds.
Fighters from this ethnic group have played a considerable role in the
shrinking of IS, both in Syria as well as in Iraq. In the latter
country, the only reasonably secure zone is the territory which they
effectively control, but which is under blockade by the central
government in Baghdad. That Washington has given the green light to such
an ungrateful action on the part of the Haidar al Abadi government in
Baghdad once again adds force to the view across the region that the US
is a fair weather friend who can turn against even those that have
helped it enormously, should some policymakers in Washington fall under
the influence of lobbies against such friendly groups. The Kurds have
suffered for decades the effects of Washington extracting advantage from
then before tossing them aside the way a banana skin gets thrown away
once the fruit inside gets consumed, including when President George H W
Bush watched in silence when Saddam Hussein used his air force to
massacre Kurds in the villages and towns where this distinct ethnic
group is in a majority, including by bombing them with NATO-supplied
chemical toxins. After the brief conventional conflict in 2003 between
the US-led alliance and Saddam Hussein’s depleted and hopelessly
outgunned army, President George W Bush refused to trod on the path of
his father. Instead of abandoning the Kurds once the conflict was over,
Bush Junior helped establish a Kurdish safe zone in the north of Iraq,
which has remained to the present, despite the recent loss of Kirkuk as a
consequence of divisions within the Kurdish leadership.
Should the Bagdad government not bow to the requirements of justice and
commonsense and respect the full autonomy of the Kurd Autonomous Region
of Iraq, it will ultimately be the loser, as tensions between Erbil and
Bagdad will grow to the detriment of stability. Unfortunately for the
Kurds, in Iraq the US appears to be returning to the George H W Bush
policies, in that it is leaving the Kurdish territory to its fate in its
eagerness to placate certain Shia and Sunni groups in Iraq, neither of
whom wish to respect the autonomy of the Kurds. Unless Washington
returns to the policy of the son (George W Bush) rather than the father,
the US will lose an essential ally in the war against both armed
extremism as well as the ideological and theological matrix that breeds
such fanaticism. The Kurds are overall representative of the modern and
moderate face of Islam (which is the only genuine face) and hence need
to be supported by the US and other major democracies rather than
betrayed repeatedly, the way it has been their fate for generations.
Fortunately, this seems to be happening in Syria, where the Trump
administration is (as yet) backing a Kurdish Autonomous Zone on the
lines of the KAR in Iraq. Despite opposition from such opposites as
Bashar Assad and Recip Tayyip Erdogan, the US Departments of State and
Defence should go ahead with ensuring the safety and longevity of a
KAR(S for Syria) on the lines of the KAR (I for Iraq). The Syrian Kurds
have been frontline fighters against Daesh, and are the only ar,ed
groups backed by NATO that are free from infestation by terrorist
elements temporarily masquerading as “freedom fighters” ( i.e. freedom
to set up the same kind of rule as al Baghdadi did in those parts of
Syria and Iraq once controlled by him). President Bashar Assad needs to
be pragmatic and accept that Syria will in effect be governed as two
zones, the first controlled largely by him and another comprising the
Kurdish zone, which will have between a third and a fourth of the area
of the Syrian Arab Republic. If he were to fight the Kurds (the way
Erdogan wants), he would be placing at risk his control of the
non-Kurdish segments of Syria, thereby losing far more territory in the
longer term than any temporary gain from attaching parts of the Kurdish
zone. Only Turkey under Erdogan has a genuine interest in preventing
KAR(S) from being formed, as that would lead to calls for setting up
KAR(T for Turkey).
The Kurds are treated far worse in Turkey than they are in Syria and
almost as bad as they were for long in Iraq, and it is likely that
members of this ethnicity in Turkey will demand justice and fair play,
something that President Erdogan is unlikely to concede peacefully to
them. Just as KAR(I) led to KAR(S), so will the latter provide the
impulse for the formation of KAR(T). Rather the oppose the historically
justified demands of the Kurds for full autonomy, Baghdad, Damascus and
Ankara should show statesmanship and agree to Kurdish zones so as to
keep their countries united rather than once again lapse into civil war.
As for the Donald John Trump administration, it should recognise the
Kurds as the most reliable allies of Washington in the region besides
the Jewish community in Israel, and follow through with their commitment
to assist in the setting up of a Kurdish safe zone in Syria on the
lines of that already functioning in Iraq.

Wednesday, 17 January 2018

A five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court has begun the final
hearing in the Aadhaar case. The bench, headed by Chief Justice of
India Dipak Misra is hearing the petitions challenging the validity of
Aadhaar contending that it violates an individual’s fundamental right to
privacy. Senior Supreme Court lawyer, Shyam Divan, appearing for
petitioners, told the five-judge Constitution bench that Aadhaar may
cause death of citizens’ civil rights. “A people’s Constitution is being
sought to be converted into a State’s Constitution,” Divan told the
apex court. He claimed that if the Aadhaar programme was allowed to
continue unimpeded, it would “hollow out” the Constitution. The counsel
said the government’s unique identity programme, which it had rolled out
through a “succession of marketing strategies and smoke and mirrors”
was “designed to tether every citizen to an electronic leash”. Divan
claimed that the Aadhaar programme “inverts the relationship between the
citizen and the state.” In August last year, a nine-judge bench of the
apex court had held that Right to Privacy was a Fundamental Right under
the Constitution. Several petitioners challenging the validity of
Aadhaar had also claimed it violated privacy rights. The issue regarding
the validity of Aadhaar and possible leakage of data has cropped up
time and again since the inception of the Unique Identification
Authority of India (UIDAI) number. On January 15, the Unique
Identification Authority of India said it has decided to enable face
recognion to add another layer of security for inclusive authentication
for Aadhaar card holders. The service will be launched by July 1.

Sunday, 14 January 2018

The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has arrived in Delhi
today for the first visit by an Israeli leader to this country in 15
years. This comes six months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi became
the first Indian PM to visit Israel. India and Israel are getting closer
and closer. After the Israeli PM leaves, ten heads of state of Asean
countries are arriving here- all together. How is this re-positioning
India's role in the region?

Saturday, 13 January 2018

Some
weeks ago, this columnist and his wife went to a cinema show at a mall
in Gurgaon, whose cafeteria had an excellent chocolate éclair. It was
while consuming this together with a glass of coconut water that the
national anthem was played on screen. It took a few moments before the
éclair and the coconut water could be safely deposited by the side of
the seat, thereby enabling this columnist to rise to attention, guiltily
conscious of the fact that for part of the time that the anthem was
being played, it was not possible to be standing to attention.
Fortunately, there were very few other viewers, and none rushed to the
police and the nearest television anchor to declaim against the apparent
“disrespect” (albeit for a few moments) to the anthem as a consequence
of deciding not to stand until after the éclair and coconut water were
safely deposited.

Any normal citizen would instinctively rise to one’s feet whenever
the national anthem got played, and this columnist is no exception.
However, the incident did create some curiosity in his mind as to what
materials the relevant Supreme Court bench relied upon when it made the
playing of the national anthem obligatory at theatres (though not as yet
at school or sports assemblies). There must be weighty reasons based on
objective research for the learned bench to believe that such a move
would significantly boost the patriotism quotient of customers at movie
theatres, and that feelings of patriotism were otherwise not strong
enough, else the highest court in the land would not have given the
emphatic order that it did. However, some may argue that, given the
Republic of India’s age of 71, cannot the citizenry of this country be
trusted upon to be patriotic without recourse to methods such as the
obligatory playing of the national anthem in theatres? That they do not
need their lives and their activities to be micromanaged by the state
and its institutions the way it was during earlier times.

The superiority of civil society over the myrmidons of government is
clear from the fact that cash surpluses come from the private sector and
the deficits from the state sector, barring monopolies such as ONGC or
the RBI. Unfortunately for India’s prospects after 1947, those who took
charge from Lord Louis Mountbatten believed that only the government
could be trusted to do the right thing and never the people. They
continued a governance structure, in which the myriad arms of government
have far more authority and discretion over the lives of citizens than
in any other major democracy. They systematically weakened private
industry and individual initiative and pumped resources into the state
sector, which from that time onwards has been digging deeper and deeper
into public funds for mere survival.

As for the judiciary, that noble and necessary institution has
entered into practically every domain of human life in India, whether
public or private, and routinely gives judgements that have enormous
consequences, sometimes on individuals, but often on much more people,
sometimes even on the entire country, without sharing sufficient detail
about how such conclusions were reached. Of course, among the champions
in a competition between the judiciary and the executive for decisions
that impact the most number of people is probably the 8 November 2016
demonetisation of 86% of the country’s currency, done so as to try and
suck up the 6% of black money that exists in the form of Indian
currency.

The judicial system is at the heart of the Rule of Law. And most of
us have direct evidence of the painfully slow manner in which the legal
system functions. In a particular case familiar to this columnist, the
two children of a deceased individual from Mumbai have spent nearly four
decades in court because a self-proclaimed relative in Haryana filed a
suit to get an equal share of the property left behind by their father.
Thus far, there is no sign of the case getting finally decided, and such
delays seem not the exception, but the norm in all too many cases.
India has a world class judiciary and the Supreme Court needs to set
time limits for disposal of cases. Deadlines given need to take account
of the fact that human life is short, and hence justice needs to be
completed within five years at a maximum. We have a system where
practically all judicial decisions can be re-examined and re-litigated,
and where a plethora of additional cases daily move into the chain,
there to form larger and larger pools of cases yet to be finally—and
this is the operative word, finally—decided.

In another case involving a family, some relatives residing in
Bangalore filed a property suit against another branch of the family
living in Trivandrum, that was finally decided in favour of the latter
by the Supreme Court, but after more than two decades, during which the
individual against whom the case was filed died of old age. More than
two decades later, the same Bangalore-based relatives have now filed
essentially the same case against those Trivandrum-based relatives who
are still alive. Will this too have to wait another 20 years and another
Supreme Court verdict before getting settled? And after that, will
there be a third effort through filing yet another case? Has it become
the reality in India that in practice, cases never get settled except
temporarily? Should not changes in procedures get introduced that ensure
that this no longer be the case, and that an absolute 5-year rule gets
established? When will the Supreme Court act on this?

Fortunately for those who prefer the 21st rather to the 19th century,
the Supreme Court has lately made moves towards re-examining its
earlier dismissal of a High Court verdict decriminalising same sex
relationships between consenting adults. Hopefully, it will also relook
its earlier rejection of a petition to decriminalise defamation. Given
the obvious interest of the executive in ensuring that the powers
enjoyed by British colonial officers remain, only our judiciary has the
power to ensure that the people of India be treated as adults, rather
than juveniles or half-wits. Only “minimum governance” and not “maximum
powers” to officialdom can create the impetus needed for China-style
growth in India. For ensuring such a situation, the hope of citizens is
that the Supreme Court of India will consistently and strongly widen the
zone of individual freedom by pruning that of governmental discretion.

Friday, 12 January 2018

PRESIDENT W J Clinton twice declined an offer of alliance with India,
first when P V Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister of India and later
during the period in office of A B Vajpayee. This will count as a
history-altering error by the 42nd President of the United States, of as
great import as his refusal to craft a US-Russia alliance rather than
continue with Cold War-era efforts at downsizing and humiliating Moscow,
of course, after the pervasive influence on the Clintons on academic
and journalistic life in the US reduces sufficiently to permit an
accurate estimate of the 8 Clinton Presidential years and the nearly six
“semi-presidential” years when either Hillary Clinton or her acolytes
were in effective command of much of the Obama Administration. The later
period was when geopolitical disasters such as the meltdown in the
Middle East occurred.
It must be said to the credit of the 43rd US President (George W Bush)
that he accepted the counsel of National Security Advisor Condoleezza
Rice and worked towards building up a 21st century alliance with Delhi,
albeit mainly on US terms, a phenomenon particularly marked during the
Sonia-Manmohan years, when essential initiatives such as the thorium
fuel nuclear energy program and the indigenous nuclear submarine program
were slowed down to a crawl. It was only during the last quarter of the
Obama Administration that a more balanced alignment was agreed by
Washington thanks substantially to the vision of Defence Secretary
Ashton Carter. The Modi Administration accepted the judgment of the
Washington Beltway (the traditional establishment) that Donald J Trump
would first never win the Republican Party nomination for the 2016
presidential election, and after he succeeded in besting all other
challengers, that he could not prevail over Hillary Clinton.
There is much talk of the Russians and the Trump campaign. The reality
is that Russia, together with China, India, the UK, Germany, Japan and
other major powers concentrated their attention on the Clintons, almost
entirely ignoring the Trump campaign except for jokes and laughter at
its expense. It was only on November 8, 2016 that Delhi, Tokyo, London,
Paris and other capitals scrambled to establish closer ties to Team
Trump, with Japan’s Shinzo Abe the first to do so. In the case of India,
the official establishment kept Prime Minister Modi away from Candidate
Trump for fear that Hillary Clinton (not to mention Barack Obama) would
look askance at such moves. Members of the Trump campaign who visited
Delhi since the close of 2015 until the close of the presidential
campaign met far fewer (and far more junior) officials than did those
visitors who were close to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Subsequently, however, Modi was able to establish a rapport with Trump
the way he had with Barack Obama, who was among the few individuals the
Prime Minister of India had a personal liking for. While Manmohan Singh
understood the importance of ensuring a close security relationship with
the US, he lacked the nerve to challenge the Cold Warriors in the
Congress Party and sign in the military field the three Foundation
Agreements with the US. Even Modi has so far been able to sign only a
single agreement, that on logistics. Weapons lobbies have worked on the
bureaucracy to prevent the other two from being signed, although it is
likely that this may happen when President Trump visits India for the
first time. The 45th US President is expected to make a visit to the
world’s most populous democracy within a relatively short time, and is
assured of a warm welcome throughout the country.
Prime Minister Modi understands the twin reality of (i) a close security
relationship with Washington and (ii) deep economic ties with Beijing,
given that the scope for bilateral trade between India and China is $
300 billion within five years, in case synergies get tapped the way they
should be. Concerning security, Modi has given his blessing to what was
previously the “tsunami alliance”, so named because it came into effect
as a consequence of that 2004 disaster. Australia, Japan, the US and
India are coming together in a security alliance named as the Quad.
However, in the years to come, it is likely that Indonesia, Vietnam and
the Philippines will join the group, making it seven-cornered. Although
it has a political system different from that of the other six members,
Vietnam has close ties with each of them, and its military skills make
it a valuable addition to the alliance evolving in the waters of the
Indo-Pacific.
During Trump’s visit to India, it is certain that discussions about the
Indo-Pacific will form a substantial part of the agenda, as will issues
such as economic growth and terror. Although the Washington Beltway has
been working at top speed to try and unseat Trump through resignation or
impeachment, the brightening economic situation within the US is making
it more difficult to convince the US public that the elected President
should be sent out of office, presumably through a hatchet job on him
conducted by Beltway personality Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Of
course, Mueller has been working at a frantic pace to try and fulfil the
hopes of Bill and Hillary Clinton. The formidable “Empress of the
Beltway” still has hopes of making her husband the first “First
Gentleman” ever to stay in the White House, although of course those
women who had less than pleasant encounters with Bill Clinton may
dispute such a description. Led by the US (which has by far the
strongest navy in the world) and India (which has a position of vantage
in the western reaches of the Indo-Pacific), the Quadrilateral Alliance
between Australia, Japan, India and the US has come to stay. Joint
sharing of intelligence and joint military exercises and training are
certain to follow.
Such exercises will take place in the eastern reaches of this vast ocean
as well, and not just in what is known as the Indian Ocean. However,
the four powers that have already joined together need more partners if
they are to do justice to their core mission of keeping the sea lanes of
the Indo-Pacific safe for maritime commerce. After India, it is
Indonesia that is the most important player in the western reaches of
the Indo-Pacific, and it is therefore necessary for the Quad to invite
Jakarta to join the coalition. It helps that Indonesia is a moderate
state where extremists are under watch and are being dealt with so as to
lower the risk such elements pose to the rest of society. The
culturally vibrant Philippines is a significant player in the region in
terms of potential, while Vietnam brings several security and other
assets to the table. The sooner the Friendly Four expand into the
Sincere Seven, the better it will be for overall security in Asia.

Saturday, 6 January 2018

Since
the British era, the obsession of the Ministry of Finance has been to
slice away as big a share as it can get away with from the national
cake, rather than working out rates that would best grow the cake. An
example is the clumsy way in which GST has been conceived and
implemented. Both the 28% and 18% rates should be abolished, as should
the applicability of GST regulations to small-scale industries and
enterprises. Now comes another hugely consequential legislative
enactment—abolishing the inhuman practice of “instant triple talaq” that
has been used to divorce Muslim women who are citizens of India. The
triple talaq bill can indeed do with modifications, including inclusion
of a new clause that would make the practice of multiple wives illegal
prospectively, rather than be allowed to continue into the indefinite
future. Should any political party in India vote against the abolition
of polygamy, the women of India will not forget or forgive them. Law
Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad needs to press his colleagues for
legislation that would abolish not just instant triple talaq, but
polygamy. This practice is scripturally permitted to Muslims only on the
condition that every wife be treated 100% equally. Except for unique
personalities such as the Prophet himself, such a condition is
impossible to fulfil. There will always be variations in spousal
treatment, whether this be in terms of material necessities provided or
the quantum of affection lavished on each wife. Given such a virtually
impossible condition for taking more than a single wife, it is obvious
that those intent on following the Word of God as revealed by Prophet
Muhammad should not have more than a single spouse. The proposed bill
should enforce monogamy, as is the case in numerous countries across the
globe that have substantial Muslim populations, including in Europe and
North America. In all these states, polygamy is banned, and so should
it be in India.

In the name of protecting the rights of Muslims, what almost all
political parties through their leaders are doing is to continue to
empower the Wahhabi fringe within a community that is overall as modern
and moderate as its Hindu counterparts. Across the country, Muslim women
(save a few in thrall to patriarchy) have welcomed the move to make
illegal instant triple talaq, and they will be doubly happy were
polygamy to get abolished through the passage of a law in this regard.
Those wishing to indulge in such a practice are at liberty to find
employment and a new life in the diminishing number of countries that
still permit polygamy, but they should not in future be allowed to
embrace the practice in India. It is heartening that women in India,
especially those born into the Muslim faith, have been vocal in
welcoming the rolling back of the medievalism that has been left
shamelessly undisturbed (and indeed coddled) by successive governments
since 1947, following on the Congress Party’s failed efforts to woo
religious fanatics in the minority community from 1919 onwards, rather
than stand together with the moderate majority of Muslims. More
recently, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s political fortunes began to fade
once he tossed aside the views of his minister Arif Mohammad Khan in
favour of Wahhabis in the minority community to get passed a retrograde
bill concerning divorce for Muslim women. There are still those in the
Hindu community who favour the practice of “sati”, the burning of widows
at the pyre of a deceased husband. Should this be reason enough to
bring back such a loathsome practice? There are still those in the Hindu
community who believe that a woman should forever be under the thumb of
a man, whether he be her father, her husband, or (later) a son. Those
celebrating such practices and beliefs are acting contrary to the
freedom-suffused and inclusive spirit of Sanatan Dharma. Recent efforts
to force-feed specified diets, dress and lifestyles on the population
are reminiscent of the ravages of the Saudi Muttawa, the religious
police that has been finally been curbed by Crown Prince Mohammad bin
Salman, who has repudiated the Wahhabism that has so crippled his
country’s ability to adjust to the changed chemistry and needs of the
21st century. Those who are taking up the cause of battling Muslim
fundamentalism must be similarly active against fundamentalists of other
faiths as well, including their own, if they are to gain credibility as
a force for beneficial change.

The people of India have finally outgrown the period when they would
passively accept the diktats of the colonial system of governance still
kept in existence by the political class. As for the Mamata Banerjees,
they will meet the political fate of Sonia Gandhi if they pursue a
policy of appeasement of the Wahhabi fringe within the minority
community. Instead, such politicians should recognise the common
interests that bind together the Hindu and Muslim communities and
empower the moderates. This is especially important in Bengal, in a
context where Wahhabism is growing in potency in Bangladesh despite
Hasina Wajed’s efforts at curbing such a tendency. The danger of
contagion is high, given the open border between India and Bangladesh,
whose citizens have been flooding into Bengal and Assam, and from there
to the rest of the country, for decades. The Congress Party under Rahul
Gandhi needs to signal its support for the 21st century by calling for a
legislative ban on polygamy. As for the provision for imprisonment in
triple talaq cases, this should be made conditional on the wife, who
alone should have the right to demand such a punishment.

This, of course, would in effect mean that her marriage was truly
over. The right to enforce a jail term on the husband must vest with the
aggrieved wife rather than with the police. In 1919, a fateful turn by
the Congress Party in the matter of a revivalist movement for the
Caliphate led to other acts of fundamentalist appeasement and a swelling
of the ultimately successful demand for Partition. It is now 2018, and
political parties in India need to do what is right for the many by
ignoring the veto of the few. If they continue to pander to the fringe,
India may enter through political miscalculations into another
stability-destroying cycle of distance and discord between Hindus and
Muslims. Isolating the fringe within all communities and engaging with
and empowering the moderate, modern majority within each must be made
the norm in politics.

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About Prof. M. D. Nalapat

Prof. Madhav Das Nalapat (aka MD Nalapat or Monu Nalapat), holds the UNESCO Peace Chair and is Director of the Department of Geopolitics at Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India. The former Coordinating Editor of the Times of India, he writes extensively on security, policy and international affairs. Prof. Nalapat has no formal role in government, although he is said to influence policy at the highest levels. @MD_Nalapat

MD Nalapat's anthology 'Indutva' (1999)

In 1999, Har-Anand published Indutva an anthology of MD Nalapat's 1990s columns from the Times of India. The individual columns are posted here, in 1998 and 1999 of the blog archive, though the exact dates of publication are uncertain.